End of the line

It's officially the last evening of my summer. Tomorrow it's back to work and I'll be in Cuisinart mode for several weeks until the trainings, new crap and schedules calm down, so this is the end of the road for all attempts to clean and organize my house and my life.

So -- how'd I do? Well, I think pretty well overall, though the crap gnomes are hard at work and I don't have as clean a house as I had several weeks ago. The goals:

1: Clean out the cluttered spots in my house: computer desk, dining room, linen closet and dining room closet.
Three out of four ain't bad, as they say. Actually it's more like 3 1/2 out of four since I got about half done on the upstairs linen closet.
2: Clear out the basement so Hubby can have many fewer excuses to get a move on with finishing the basement.
Oh, it WAS cleared, I swear. Goddamn little crap gnomes have been hard at work down there. I think I will need a couple hours on a weekend morning to go hell-for-leather down there and polish things off.
3: Clean out the attic: give away the kids' old clothes, saving the special ones, organize the attic into specific storage areas (out-of-season clothes, holidays, kids' schoolwork/stuff, AC space, furniture etc)
Now here's the success story of the summer -- the ATTIC. The one place sane people never venture during the summer and I got that sumbitch CLEAN! It's likely still clean because nobody goes up there, but still ,it's done.
4: Paint the Drama Queen's bedroom and our bedroom (have colors picked, now just have to get the paint and tools and get it done)
Still at the halfway mark there. Have the paint, need the time and official OK to go ahead and get our room done. The way he reacts it will probably be next year before I get it done, unless I can convince him to go off with the fellas again to Florida for a weekend.

Curtains are still in pieces, have a plan but again no time to make that happen. Oh well. Haven't had curtains over the blinds for eight years, so I'm not getting all bent over that.

If I manage anything else or find some miraculous way of murdering the crap gnomes that keep leaving shit all over my house, I'll post again.

It's Curtains For You, My Dear

The curtains I got via ebay definitely needed cleaning, but they were cotton twill so I figured they would survive a soak. Three did, two didn't. Actually, the liners on two of the curtains didn't survive the soak, and I'm glad I didn't pay to send them to the cleaners because they would have disintegrated there and Lord knows what I would have gotten back. I salvaged the vast majority of the main curtain fabric, so I am reasonably certain I can make some kind of nice roman-type shade with the three that survived, and then possibly make some kind of shade topper-thingy for the three windows out of the two longer pieces that were not completely unscathed. Think I have to get Mom involved in this project-- she's going to want to kill me most likely.

Elizabeth was here Friday this week, and I had the house about 90% picked up. She did a much, much better job on the regular cleaning since the only room that was a minor disaster was the toy room. I have GOT to get Hubby to finish off the basement so we can have the toys and kid crap down there (and the laundry facilities not backwards). Definitely this winter. Maybe I can get FIL to come help him when business is slow...

Leaving Thurs for the Austin/Vegas trip, hope that all goes as planned.